UIButton won't go to Aspect Fit in iPhone

Question

I have a couple UIButtons, and in IB they're set to Aspect Fit, but for some reason they're always stretching. Is there something else you have to set? I tried all the different view modes and none of them work, they all stretch.

Privation

@Werner Altesischer's answer is the right one. Make the appropriate changes. – Deceased

@Privation Are you setting background image or image? background image does not support it, only image. – Cinquefoil

Answer 1

I've had that problem before. I solved it by putting my image in a UIImageView, where contentMode settings actually work, and putting a transparent custom UIButton over top of that.

EDIT: This answer is obsolete. See @Werner Altewischer's answer for the correct answer in modern versions of iOS.

Minton

Yeah tried that, but now can't get the button to refit to the image – Privation

How do you manage button states with this technique? Seems like responding to user interaction like "highlighted" would be a nightmare. – Hentrich

This might have been the right way to do this 2.5 years ago when this question was answered, but now you can edit the UIButton's internal ImageView and set the the content mode there. See the answer by @Werner Altewischer – Teletypewriter

Answer 2

The solution is to set the contentMode on the imageView property of the UIButton. The UIButton has to be created with custom type for this to work I believe (otherwise nil is returned for this property).

Rehm

This worked for me: [button.imageView setContentMode:UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit]; – Paschall

This works for me also but if I set adjustsImageWhenHighlighted=YES, the image is stretched again when I tap on the button. – Charismatic

Set adjustImageWhenHighlighted to NO and supply an image yourself for the highlighted state instead – Rehm

The stretching in adjustsImage has been eliminated in iOS 6. – Cordovan

In iOS 8, this actually doesn't work for me. The original answer (with placing an imageView behind a transparent button) works best. – Pigeontoed

in SWIFT: button.imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentMode.ScaleAspectFit – Boucher

in Swift du jour: button.imageView!.contentMode = UIViewContentMode.scaleAspectFit – Plasticine

Is this possible within the storyboard designer, or must it be set in code? – Guanase

Also, on iOS 11+, the content mode has to be set before the image. Otherwise it will only get its good shape after taping on it. – Adelia

What might cause an image set as the image for a button to appear cut off? Text appears fine if put instead of image – Overstreet

Answer 3

This method worked for me very well.:

In Xib select the button and set user defined runtime attributes:

• Key path: self.imageView.contentMode
• Type: Number
• Value: 1

We use number because you cant use enum there. But the UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit is equal to 1.

Catcall

This also updated the image in the interface builder during design time. Great solution. – Haem

Great solution, few code and works like a charm , the enum is based on content mode list items. – Nagual

You can also add an extension to make it a bit easier: extension UIButton { @IBInspectable var imageContentMode: Int { get {return imageView?.contentMode.rawValue ?? 0} set {imageView?.contentMode = UIViewContentMode(rawValue: newValue) ?? .scaleAspectFit} } } – Jihad

Without 'self' imageView.contentMode worked for me! – Cuthbertson

Answer 4

If you are doing this in Interface Builder, you can use the Runtime attributes inspector to set this directly without any code.

Set your Key Path on the button to be "imageView.contentMode" with a type of "Number" and a value of "1" (or whichever mode you would like).

Tetrabrach

Answer 5

Use button's imageView for contentMode. Not directly on the button itself.

homeButton.imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit;
homeButton.contentHorizontalAlignment = UIControlContentHorizontalAlignmentFill;
homeButton.contentVerticalAlignment = UIControlContentVerticalAlignmentFill;
[homeButton setImage:[UIImage imageNamed:kPNGLogo] forState:UIControlStateNormal];

Northnortheast

Answer 6

If you put the image in an UIImageView behind the button, you'll loose the built-in functionality of the UIButton class, such as adjustsImageWhenHighlighted and adjustsImageWhenDisabled, and of course the ability to set different images for different states (without the hazzle of doing this yourself).

If we want to have an image unstreched for all control states, one approuch is to get the image using imageWithCGImage:scale:orientation, as in the following method:

- (UIImage *) getScaledImage:(UIImage *)img insideButton:(UIButton *)btn {

    // Check which dimension (width or height) to pay respect to and
    // calculate the scale factor
    CGFloat imgRatio = img.size.width / img.size.height, 
            btnRatio = btn.frame.size.width / btn.frame.size.height,
            scaleFactor = (imgRatio > btnRatio 
                           ? img.size.width / btn.frame.size.width
                           : img.size.height / btn.frame.size.height;

    // Create image using scale factor
    UIImage *scaledImg = [UIImage imageWithCGImage:[img CGImage]
                                             scale:scaleFactor
                                       orientation:UIImageOrientationUp];
    return scaledImg;
}

To implement this we would write:

UIImage *scaledImg = [self getScaledImage:myBtnImg insideButton:myBtn];
[myBtn setImage:scaledImg forState:UIControlStateNormal];

This should prevent the image from stretching in all control states. It worked for me, but let me know if it doesn't!

NOTE: Here we are addressing a problem relating to UIButton, but the insideButton: might as well be insideView:, or whatever one would like to fit the image into.

Purposeless

Answer 7

I had this problem a while back. The issue I had was i was trying to apply this effect to the background UIButton which is limited and therefore means you cannot adjust it as easy.

The trick is to set it as just an image then apply @ayreguitar's technique and that should fix it!

UIButton *myButton = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[myButton setContentMode:UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFill];
[myButton setImage:@"myImage.png" forState:UIControlStateNormal];

Businesswoman

Answer 8

This worked for me

[button.imageView setContentMode:UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit];

Thanks to @ayreguitar for his comment

Offcolor

Answer 9

Here's an alternative answer in swift:

myButton.imageView?.contentMode = .ScaleAspectFit

Echoism

Answer 10

Combining together a few different answers into one solution-- create a button with a custom type, set the button's imageView contentMode property, and set the image for the button (not the background image, which will still scale to fill).

//Objective-C:
UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:"myImageName.png"];
UIButton *button = [UIButton buttonWithType:UIButtonTypeCustom];
[button setImage:image forState:UIControlStateNormal];
button.imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit;

//Swift:
let image = UIImage(named: "myImageName.png")
let button = UIButton(type: .custom)
button.imageView?.contentMode = .scaleAspectFit
button.setImage(image, for: .normal)

Soonsooner

Answer 11

ios 12. You need to add also the content Alignment

class FitButton: UIButton {

    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)


    }

    override func layoutSubviews() {
        self.imageView?.contentMode = .scaleAspectFill
        self.contentHorizontalAlignment = .fill
        self.contentVerticalAlignment = .fill
        super.layoutSubviews()


    }

}

Adenoid

Supposed to be aspect FIT not FILL – Roswald

Answer 12

btn.imageView.contentMode = UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit;

Rogovy

While this code snippet may solve the question, including an explanation really helps to improve the quality of your post. Remember that you are answering the question for readers in the future, and those people might not know the reasons for your code suggestion. - From review – Shewchuk

Answer 13

This answer is based on @WernerAltewischer's answer.

To avoid having connect my button to an IBOutlet to execute the code on it, I subclassed UIButton's class:

// .h
@interface UIButtonWithImageAspectFit : UIButton
@end

// .m
@implementation UIButtonWithImageAspectFit

- (void) awakeFromNib {
    [self.imageView setContentMode:UIViewContentModeScaleAspectFit];
}

@end

Now create a custom button in your xib, and set its image (not the background image):

Then, set its class:

You're done!
Instead of

your button's image aspect fit is now as expected:

Clow

Answer 14

UIView content modes apply to the corresponding CALayer's "content". This works for UIImageViews because they set the CALayer content to the corresponding CGImage.

drawRect: ultimately renders to the layer content.

A custom UIButton (as far as I know) has no content (the rounded-rect style buttons might be rendered using content). The button has subviews: the background UIImageView, the image UIImageView, and the title UILabel. Setting the contentMode on the subviews may do what you want, but messing around with the UIButton view hierarchy is a bit of a no-no.

Supersede

Answer 15

I had problems with the image not resizing proportionately so the way I fixed it was using edge insets.

fooButton.contentEdgeInsets = UIEdgeInsetsMake(10, 15, 10, 15);

Ladysmith

Answer 16

Changing UIButton.imageView.contentMode does not worked for me.
I solved the problem by setting the image to 'Background' property.
You can add ratio constraint if you need

Decastro

Answer 17

This overlaps many of the other answers, but the solution for me was to

• set the contentMode of the UIImageView for the button to .ScaleAspectFit – which can either be done in the ”User Defined Runtime Attributes” in Interface Builder (ie. self.imageView.contentMode, Number, 1) or in a UIButton subclass;
• disable ”Autoresize Subviews”;
• set ”Edge” to ”Image” and appropriate ”Top” and ”Bottom” values for ”Inset” (which might only be needed if you, like me, used a PDF as image).

Superinduce

Answer 18

You can use imageWithCGImage as shown above (but without the missing parentheses).

Also... millions of non-4.0 phones won't work with that code at all.

Dibbell

Answer 19

[button sizeToFit] worked for me.

Otalgia

Answer 20

Similar to @Guillaume, I have created a subclass of UIButton as a Swift-File. Then set my custom class in the Interface Builder:

.

And here the Swift file:

import UIKit

class TRAspectButton : UIButton {
    required init?(coder aDecoder: NSCoder) {
        super.init(coder: aDecoder)
        self.imageView?.contentMode = .ScaleAspectFit
    }
}

Representation

Answer 21

I had the same issue, but I couldn't get it to work (perhaps it's a bug with the SDK).

Eventually, as a workaround, I placed a UIImageView behind my button and set the options I wanted on that, then simply placed a blank UIButton on top of it.

Yves

Is there an echo in here? ;-) – Minton